He started typing; she heard a low whistle. “He is no good. Aubrey, what’s this about?”
“Not on the phone, Arlo. Just pull everything and get here as soon as you can.”
? ? ?
Arlo arrived twenty minutes later. His dark hair and beaked nose were so familiar, so comforting, Aubrey nearly threw herself in his arms.
“What the hell happened to the front of your house?”
“Daisy. She got hammered and drove into it. She’s in bad shape at Midtown.”
“I hadn’t heard.” The reproach was clear: Because you don’t ever get in touch anymore.
“Listen, you better come in and sit down. I’ve made some lunch. You’re going to want a full stomach. And Tyler’s here.”
Arlo tensed. “Is he straight?”
“Yeah. He’s helping. So be cool, all right?”
Arlo followed her into the house. Tyler was sitting at the dining room table. They didn’t shake hands, but Tyler nodded to Arlo.
She put a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches down, passed out glasses of tea.
Arlo put a stack of papers on the table, grabbed a sandwich, took a huge bite, scattering crumbs. Winston came and sat beneath his feet, lapping up the crumbly bits, happy to be of service. Arlo swallowed and asked, “So what’s this all about, Aubrey?”
With a glance at Tyler, she filled him in: Derek Allen approaching her. Daniel Cutter claiming Josh was working for Allen, which made Arlo’s face pale. And the email with the photo, which made the paleness turn to vibrant red.
“You’re telling me this guy is claiming Josh was running drugs out of Vandy?”
Aubrey nodded. “Tyler? You want to tell him what you heard?”
“I was in holding downtown, there was a guy in there telling tales. We’ve figured out now it was Derek Allen. He said he’d run a pharmacy scam five years ago with a med student from Vandy. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Aubrey said, “I think Allen knew who Tyler was. I think he let him overhear the conversation on purpose so he’d say something to me. And I do have a bunch of money coming to me tomorrow. He’s probably gearing up to kill me and steal the money.”
Arlo set his sandwich down, took a huge breath, ran his hand over his shadowy chin.
“Christ.”
Aubrey nodded. “That about sums it up.”
“Fucking Josh. If he weren’t already dead, I’d kill him.”
“What if he weren’t dead?”
Arlo shook his head. “He’s gone, Aubs. You know it, I know it.”
“We never found a body, Arlo. If he was into something with these people, who knows what happened.”
“The cops would have found something. They dug like mad.”
Aubrey just shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t dig in the right spot.”
“This is insane. If that’s the case, if Allen is coming for you . . . Aubrey, we’ll need to get you somewhere safe.”
“We can talk about that once you tell me what you found out.”
Arlo opened the file in front of him. “Okay. Here’s everything I could pull on short notice about Derek Allen. He made his bones in New York, on Long Island, with the Guiducci crime family. He had a reputation for being ruthless. They used him for the jobs the sane guys didn’t want, and Allen took them all. It got to the point that they started to distrust him, to be scared of him, because he was off the rails, and they probably tried to take him out, but Allen was too smart for that. He floated around for a while, no one really knows where.
“Then he shows up down here, heading up a branch of the Dixie Mafia. They were doing a brisk business in hillbilly heroin, meth, all the nasty stuff, until he got sideways with one of his partners, who turned on him, tried to detach Allen from the business. He had no idea who he was dealing with. Allen cut him to pieces, left the parts at each of his crew’s houses, as a message. He’s a scary dude. And then he ended up gut-shot down on Lischey Avenue, opposite the body of another drug dealer, a Mexican working out of Memphis. The gun that shot him was found at the scene. It looked cut-and-dried, a deal gone bad—they shot each other. The Mexican died, Allen nearly did. But he pulled through, and because he’d violated his parole, having a gun on him, they sent him back to prison to finish out his sentence. The world was blessed with the removal of two more bad guys.”
“You don’t find it odd that all this just happened to go down the same night Josh disappeared?” Aubrey said.
Arlo took a large bite of his sandwich. Chewed and swallowed. She could tell he was thinking, processing. Finally, he said, “I can’t believe this. How in the world would Josh even get matched up with a guy like Derek Allen?”
She slid two more grilled cheese sandwiches onto their plates, took the third for herself, and sat at the table across from Arlo. Raised her eyebrow at Tyler, who took a deep breath and said, “It was my fault.”